
Class _BY„454: 



Book 



Copyright N°. 




COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE PRESENT CRISIS IN THE 
KINGDOM OF GOD 



A GALL FOR CHARACTER 



DEAN EDWARD INCREASE BOSWORTH 
OBERL1N THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 






New York 

The International Committee 

of Young Men's Christian Associations 



m 









I LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

MAN R 1907 



.^JDo&yrlght Entry 
CLASS A XXc„ No, 
COPY B. 



, 



Copyright 1907, by 

The International Committee 

of Young Men's Christian Associations 



THE PRESENT CRISIS IN THE 

KINGDOM OF GOD: 

A CALL FOR CHARACTER 



"Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is 
at hand." — John the Baptist. 



These words were originally a call 
for character in a great crisis. An earn- 
est man who had met God in the wilder- 
ness brought the message to his country- 
men. Men, women, and children flocked 
to the wild gorge of the Jordan river 
to meet him. They brought with them 
the scant supply of food necessary for 
Oriental peoples, slept by * night under 
the open sky and listened by day to the 
impassioned appeals which the young 
prophet at intervals delivered from some 
rocky pulpit. Occasionally large groups 
of people went eagerly down with the 
prophet into the deeper channel of the 
valley where the swift river ran and, 
praying God to forgive their sins, came 
up out of the baptismal water with stern 
resolve or radiant enthusiasm on their 



4 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

faces. The call which so thrilled these 
people was both a warning and a prom- 
ise. It was a warning because they 
expected the kingdom of God to be 
preceded by Jehovah's dread day of 
judgment. It was a promise because 
their brightest dream of good things to 
come was expressed by this simple 
phrase, "the kingdom of heaven/' or "the 
kingdom of God." These men and 
women had an inadequate understanding 
of the phrase. It had a far richer, more 
vital meaning than that which their 
bright dream of national power and 
glory contemplated. At this very time 
there was coming out through the door- 
way of a Nazareth carpenter shop a 
Man who caught up the phrase, filled it 
with a new content, and sent it ringing 
down through the centuries, a virile cry 
to the men of every generation: "Re- 
pent: for the kingdom of God is at 
hand." "Change your lives, for God's 
new order is at hand." It is a call for 
character in the presence of a crisis. 



a call for character 5 

What Is the Crisis? 

That is, what is the meaning of this 
phrase, "the kingdom of God is at 
hand"? Originally, in the Jordan val- 
ley, on the lips of the prophet, it meant 
that God was about to show Himself and 
His will for the life of men in the per- 
sonality of the Messiah. This God did 
in the personality of Jesus, the Christ. 
Jesus made a personal revelation of God 
and a clear statement of God's will for 
human society, which has ever since in- 
creasingly dominated the thinking and 
endeavor of all generations. He held be- 
fore men the ideal civilization of brother- 
ly sons of God that should finally pre- 
vail in every nation. 

In the centuries that have passed since 
those first days in Palestine it has be- 
come evident that Jesus Christ is a liv- 
ing personality, continuing to enforce 
His revelation of God and God's will for 
the life of men. A marvelous feature of 
the character of Jesus Christ was His 
quiet consciousness that He should not 



6 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

be without influence in the world of men 
He so loved, even after He had disap- 
peared from among them. He seemed 
quietly confident that He should never 
withdraw in vital power and personal 
presence until His vision of the civiliza- 
tion of brotherly men should be realized. 
"I shall leave you," he said, "and the 
world shall no longer see me; but I will 
be with you, and you shall be made to 
feel that I am with you and that I love 
you." There have never failed to be 
men and women who in their own ex- 
perience have found something which 
corroborates this personal anticipation 
of Jesus Christ. The power of Jesus 
which brought such health and cheer to 
the sick bodies and the sore hearts of the 
men of Galilee has never ceased to make 
its presence felt among living men. 



"No fable old or mystic lore, 
Nor dream of bards and seers, 
No dead fact stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years, 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 



a 



But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 

A present help is He; 
And faith has still its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 



"The healing of the seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
And we are whole again/' 

Jesus Christ not only lives among men 
and so perpetuates the original crisis and 
its consequent call for character, but He 
is securing a progressive understanding 
of God and His will for the life of men. 
He is making men see more and more 
clearly what the kingdom of God means. 
Such progress He Himself anticipated: 
"Many things I have yet to say unto you 
but ye cannot bear them now.' : Men are 
being led into a clearer realization of 
what is involved in the historical revela- 
tion of God and His will for the life of 
men made two thousand years ago and 
reported to us in the documents that con- 
stitute the New Testament. 



S A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

In this process of enlarging conception 
it has become increasingly clear that this 
which at first was called the kingdom 
of God is a developing civilization of 
brotherly sons of God in which two 
things will occur : first, every personality 
will have opportunity for the develop- 
ment of its latent powers, opportunity to 
become what God means it to be; and 
second, all the forces latent in the natural 
environment of these personalities will 
be brought out of earth or air and placed 
by human effort increasingly at the serv- 
ice of men. In this civilization of friend- 
ly workmen, living in the presence of the 
God who is their Father, the long unfail- 
ing aspiration of Jesus for humanity 
shall be realized. 

In this process by which the Spirit of 
Jesus makes men understand more and 
more clearly what is involved in His 
revelation of God and God's will for the 
life of men crises occur. It is a process 
with crises. Perhaps there will finally be 
some great crisis comparable with that 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 9 

in which the revelation of God was made 
by Jesus Christ in terms of human life 
and death and resurrection, human strug- 
gle and victory two thousand years ago. 
However that may be, lesser crises in the 
process certainly occur when men make 
swift advance in their understanding of 
God and of His will for the life of the 
world. 

The present is such a crisis. The crisis 
is due to the fact that sociological con- 
ditions have suddenly brought men of 
widely different classes into unusually 
close relation to each other. The world 
has never before, in so short a time, ex- 
perienced changes comparable with those 
that have occurred in the last few dec- 
ades. Men have been forced into such 
close contact that the welfare of each is 
dependent upon the conduct of others to 
a degree hitherto unknown. Men have 
been forced together geographically. A 
man, without rising from his office chair 
may, in a few moments, through tele- 
phone, telegraph, and cable, interchange 



io A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

thought with a man on the other side of 
the earth. It is as if he could almost 
hear his voice and feel his hand. Men 
are being drawn together industrially. 
The miner comes up the shaft with his 
grimy face and looks the coal baron 
straight in the eye. The two men are 
brought close together and must talk it 
out face to face. Men are being brought 
together socially. Within the lifetime of 
men still in active business Chicago was 
a small village and in the village was a 
small tradesman. The village became a 
metropolis, the small tradesman became 
a merchant prince, and his daughter be- 
came the wife of the Viceroy of India — 
all within the limits of a single lifetime. 
Irresistible forces which no man can con- 
trol have been steadily bringing men 
closer together and making the welfare 
of each dependent upon the behavior of 
the other, as never before. The result of 
crowding men so close together may be 
that they will fall upon each other in 
deadly hatred or that they will be bound 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER n 

together with ties of mutual respect and 
brotherly good will. If they come to- 
gether only to hate each other, they will 
fall apart, and civilization will retrograde 
to a point from which it cannot come 
again to the present point for some cen- 
turies. What the outcome of the present 
crisis shall be depends upon one thing, 
namely, the character of the men con- 
cerned in the crisis. Can Jesus Christ 
have the kind of men He wants to thrust 
down into the thick of life ? Can He find 
His type of man in sufficient abundance 
to bring the present crisis to a successful 
issue? If so, they will be what He called 
them of old, "the salt of the earth" — 
that which preserves civilization from de- 
cay and disintegration. 

The present crisis, then, constitutes a 
call for character. The old words ring 
out with new meaning: "Repent: for 
the kingdom of God is at hand" ; change 
your lives, for God's new order comes 
swiftly on. 



12 a call for character 

What Kind of Character? 

The next question is, What kind of 
character is called for by the present 
crisis? What type of man does Jesus 
Christ need to thrust down into the thick 
of life, where in dust and heat, in passion I 

and strife, great issues are being wrought 
out ? 

He calls for men who will let Him 
train them for the crisis. They must be 
men who, consciously or unconsciously, 
are His disciples and who by the laws 
of personal association are becoming like 
Him in the fundamental qualities of His 
character. 

There are two qualities in the charac- 
ter of Jesus Christ which stand preemi- 
nent: "truth" and "grace." In John's 
Gospel they are reported to have been 
the characteristics that most deeply im- 
pressed His associates: "We beheld his 
glory, the glory as of the only begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth." 
"Truth" is conformity between repre- 
sentation and reality — honesty, sincerity. 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 13 

The Greek word translated "grace" is 
associated with the idea of beauty and 
gladness. It is a beautiful kindness that 
makes its recipient glad. 

First of all, then, the call for charac- 
ter is a call for men of Jesus Christ's 
thoroughgoing sincerity. Men who are 
so close to each other, and consequently 
so dependent upon each other's behavior 
for their own welfare, must be able to 
trust each other's sincerity. Civilization 
cannot progress, or even persist, if there 
are not at hand plenty of men who can 
trust each other, men who do not wish 
to seem to be more or better than they 
are honestly trying to become, men of 
sincere devotion to that which they be- 
lieve to be right, men who use language, 
not to obscure, but to express thought. 

The call is for students and teachers — 
for teachers are tempted even more 
strongly than students — who do not wish 
to seem in the classroom to know more 
about the subject than they really do 
know. A student who will cheat in class 



14 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

is cultivating the disposition that will 
lead him to do the same kind of thing 
in a bank. A dishonest entry in a labora- 
tory notebook cultivates the disposition 
that leads to a dishonest entry in keeping 
the books of a bank. The call is for 
honest men who do not lead a double life 
— one life at home and in respectable 
society, another life in places which they 
secretly visit; men who are the same by 
night and day. Someone has said: 
"Character is what you are in the dark." 
The crisis demands business men who 
will employ no method in business which 
they would not be willing to have the 
public know; workmen who will do the 
plumbing under the floor as honestly as 
that which is subject to daily inspection. 
Honest lawyers are called for, who will 
stand for the enforcement and not the 
evasion of law, no matter how much 
money the law-breaking individual or 
corporation may offer. Such a lawyer, 
when he finds that his client is guilty, will 
do his utmost to secure a fair trial, will 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 15 

introduce every ameliorating circum- 
stance, and will defend his client to the 
limit of justice, but will never take sat- 
isfaction in a professional success that 
has involved the defeat of justice. The 
crisis calls for honest ministers who will 
express their real convictions concerning 
truths that seem to them to be funda- 
mental and timely, regardless of the 
wealth or poverty, the liberalism or con- 
servatism of the people who sit in the 
pews. There must be ministers who will 
think sincerely, who will not be kept from 
thinking on certain subjects by the fear 
of possibly reaching conclusions that 
it would be costly to express. There 
must be ministers who will not use con- 
ventional religious phraseology that is in 
excess of their experience. The crisis 
calls for honest editors who cannot be 
hired to advocate in print a cause in 
which they do not believe. The call is 
everywhere for honest character, for 
men who will "draw the thing as they 
see it for the God of things as they are" ; 






1 6 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

for men who "hunger and thirst after" 
character rather than after reputation; 
for men who, when in action, are not 
listening for the click of the camera and 
the scratch of the reporter's pencil, but 
who are intent on doing right; for men 
who feel keenly the deep disgrace of be- 
ing willing to seem to be something more 
or better than they are earnestly taking 
pains to become; for men who realize 
the repulsive vulgarity of wanting some- 
thing that another man ought to have. 

The call for character is a call for men 
of Jesus Christ's invincible good will. 
Men cannot live so close together as they 
are now forced to live unless they are 
men of invincible good will. They must 
be men of an invincible good will to God. 
That is, they must be reverent men, in 
whom the sense of God becomes ever 
more profound, more subduing, more up- 
lifting. They must be dominated by an 
invincible good will to the men on every 
side, the good men and the bad men, the 
needy men and the successful men. It 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 17 

is comparatively easy to feel good will 
toward the man less successful than 
one's self, but to feel good will toward 
the competitor who has fairly achieved 
a superior success is the triumph of 
Christian character. It is even more dif- 
ficult for some than to feel invincible 
good will for the man who fights them. 
The old farmer in time of drought said 
in prayer meeting that there was one 
blessing for which he was profoundly 
thankful, namely, that no other com- 
munity was any better off than their 
own! 

The call is for men of unfailing good 
will toward men as such, toward men 
simply because they are men. Jesus did 
not wait until men had become rich, or 
educated, or skilled before His interest 
was aroused. The poor, the ignorant, 
the little children, appealed to Him be- 
cause they were human. Men are called 
for in the present crisis who will recog- 
nize the fact that in everv human situa- 
tion the chief feature is the men that are 



1 8 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

concerned in it. Let the statement be 
repeated : in any situation the principal 
feature is the men who are concerned. 
This means that the manufacturer will 
recognize as the principal features of his 
situation the men who work for him, 
their wives and their children ; the men, 
women, and children who constitute the 
public that must eat or wear what his 
factory produces. There can be no adul- 
terated foods, no noxious or worthless 
patent medicines, no shoddy clothing. 
There must be workmen who will realize 
that the chief features of their situation 
are the men, women, and children whose 
health, happiness, and morals will be af- 
fected by the faithfulness with which the 
workman does his job. There must be 
the plumber who will do his work with 
a good will as conscientious as it would 
be if he knew that his own brother's fam- 
ily was to occupy the house. The crisis 
calls for men who do not wish for special 
privileges, for men who feel restless and 
discontented when they see other men 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 19 

with a chance for the best things that is 
less favorable than their own, no matter 
whether these other men are in pagan 
lands, in the neighboring commonwealth, 
or in the next block. It is the kindling 
sense of human brotherhood which Jesus 
calls for in the present crisis and which 
He is able to inspire. The heart of Jesus 
Christ may beat so steadily into the heart 
of His disciple that there shall issue a 
steady stream of invincible good will 
pulsing out with the strong head pressure 
of the beating heart of Christ Himself. 

"Let me live in a house by the side of the 
road, 
Where the race of men go by — 
The men that are good and the men that 
are bad, 
As good and as bad as I. 
I would not sit in the scorner's seat, 

Or hurl the cynic's ban. 
Let me live in a house by the side of the 
road 
And be a friend to man/' 

If men of such character can be found 
for the present crisis, then the time 
draws on 



20 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

"When shall all men's good 
Be each man's rule, and universal peace 
Lie like a shaft of light across the land 
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea 
Through all the circles of the Golden Year." 

The call is for character which pos- 
sesses something of Jesus Christ's pro- 
found peace. Such peace results natu- 
rally from sincerity and good will. The 
man who has ceased from the nervous 
strain of trying to appear to be what he 
is not, begins to be at peace ; so also the 
man who has ceased from hate and envy 
and has begun the life of good will. The 
call is for men who can go into the rush 
of modern life with the poise of Jesus 
Christ; for men who can move among 
feverish men and yet be cool ; for men 
who in great sorrow and bitter disap- 
pointment can stand steady; for men 
who have come under the spell of eter- 
nity ; for men whose lives open down into 
the deep stillness that always underlies 
the noisy surface of our busy life; for 
men who 




A CALL FOR CHARACTER 



21 



"Hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place 
And whispers to the worlds of space 
In the deep night, that all is well." 



The Call to College Men 

The call to character comes with spe- 
cial force to this college generation. 
There are men living quietly in college 
today who ten years from now will be 
down in the thick of things, as manufac- 
turers, journalists, ministers, teachers, 
lawyers. They will be able to do some- 
thing of far-reaching influence in the 
crisis that is on. What they will do ten 
years from now may be largely deter- 
mined by what they are quietly thinking, 
resolving, doing, now. No man gets 
ready for an emergency in a minute. 
What he will do in the emergency de- 
pends upon what he did yesterday, is 
doing today, is going to do tomorrow — 
upon what he has gradually formed the 
habit of doing in all the interval between 
the present and the time when the emer- 



22 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

gency suddenly confronts him. Respon- 
sibilities come quickly upon young men 
in our day. It has been so in our country 
since the beginning. We talk about the 
"Pilgrim Fathers" and think of a group 
of old men. But they were a group of 
young, enthusiastic adventurers. Only 
one of their leaders was in middle life at 
the time of the Plymouth landing. Miles 
Standi sh was under forty. William 
Bradford, when he began his long career 
as governor, was about thirty-one. Ed- 
ward Winslow, the diplomat of the col- 
ony in its foreign relations, was under 
thirty. From that day to this heavy re- 
sponsibilities have come quickly upon 
young men. College men must get ready 
now. We must give ourselves over to 
Jesus Christ's training now. Jesus 
Christ's call for character sounds out in 
the lecture room, the laboratory, the dor- 
mitory, the fraternity house, the gym- 
nasium, the athletic field: "Repent: for 
the kingdom of God is at hand." Change 
vour life, for God's new order comes on. 



">J01 



A CALL FOR CHARACTER 23 

Get into the habit of taking orders from 
Jesus Christ now. Then follow Him 
wherever He leads you later. It may be 
into the packing house, into the tenement 
house, across the seas to other peoples, 
into the pulpit, into the courtroom or the 
municipal council chamber. Say to Him, 
"Lord, I will follow Thee wheresoever 
Thou goest/' and He will lead you far 
out into life. The Spirit of Jesus is not 
haunting empty churches six days in the 
week waiting for them to fill up on the 
seventh. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is 
out in the thick of life, and there He will 
lead you if you will be a man of His type, 
a man of His thorough sincerity, invinci- 
ble good will, and deepening peace. 

"Lead me; yea, lead me deeper into life, 
This suffering human life, wherein Thou 

hVst 
And breathest still, and hold'st Thy way 

divine. 
'Tis here, O pitying Christ, where Thee I 

seek, 
Here where the strife is fiercest ; where the 

sun 



*4 A CALL FOR CHARACTER 

Beats down upon the highway thronged 

with men, 
And in the raging mart. Oh, deeper lead 
My soul into the living world of souls 
Where Thou dost move. 

But lead me, Man divine, 
Where'er Thou willst, only that I may find, 
At the long journey's end, Thy image there, 
And grow more like to it. ,, 



MAR 14 1907 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER I NERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



